These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous
description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of Mrs.
Beale.
Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with
the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him to the
bone!"
"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed.
Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me to
say--its for him."
He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets
and vaguely humming a tune--even Maisie could see he was a little
nervous--he only walked to the window and looked out at the Regent's
Park. "Well, he has promised," Maisie said. "But how will papa like it?"
"His being in and out? Ah that's a question that, to be frank with you,
my dear, hardly matters. In point of fact, however, Beale greatly enjoys
the idea that Sir Claude too, poor man, has been forced to quarrel with
your mother."
Sir Claude turned round and spoke gravely and kindly. "Don't be afraid,
Maisie; you won't lose sight of me."
"Thank you so much!" Maisie was radiant. "But what I meant--don't you
know?--was what papa would say to ME."
"Oh I've been having that out with him," said Mrs. Beale. "He'll behave
well enough. You see the great difficulty is that, though he changes
every three days about everything else in the world, he has never
changed about your mother. It's a caution, the way he hates her."
Sir Claude gave a short laugh.
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